Technical Field
The present disclosure generally relates to web-based document retrieval techniques, and to systems and methods for retrieving, viewing, and manipulating objects in web documents. In particular, and without limitation, the present disclosure relates to systems and methods for providing improved web-based document retrieval techniques, including systems and methods for performing manipulations on objects within retrieved web documents once these objects are visible to a user.
Background Information
The Internet provides a wide array of resources and services. Among other things, the Internet enables users to access inter-linked documents of the World Wide Web (the “web”). Modern web documents, such as web pages, are able to seamlessly integrate textual information with images, streaming video, and other interactive media. Search engines enable web users to locate relevant web documents or pages. For example, upon receipt of a search query from a user, a search engine may provide the user not only hyperlinks associated with the query, but also images, videos, and additional online content, such as advertisements, that are related to the search query.
Hyperlinks enable users to navigate the World Wide Web. For example, by clicking on an article on a web site of a news provider, the user may be presented with the textual content of the article. Such information may be supplemented by images and/or one or more streaming videos related to the article.
While modern web documents can greatly expand the richness of online content available to a user, related images, streaming videos, and other additional content may increase the volume of data to be downloaded. Depending on a user's connection speed and computer resources, the user often must wait or deal with extended delays to download an entire web page.
There also other drawbacks with modern web documents. For instance, images and other additional content is rarely clustered around a single portion of a web document or page. More commonly, such content is positioned throughout the web page in order to capture the user's attention as the user scrolls through the page. However, in many instances, a user may only view a selected portion of a web page in order to obtain desired information. Moreover, while a search engine may return a large number of results and content associated with a search query, the user may only view several of these results. In such an instance, the user has downloaded all of the additional media content provided by the search engine, but has only viewed a small subset of that content.
In view of the foregoing, there is a need for improved systems and methods for selectively loading and manipulating multimedia content in a web document based on, for example, a portion of that web document visible to a user. Such systems and methods may be implemented in computer-based environments, such as the Internet and network environments that provide online content to users.